Paata Zakareishvili Doubts about the Status-Neutral Travel Documents on Abkhaz and Ossetian People

Georgian Dream’s candidate for the State Minister for Reintegration Issues Paata Zakareishvili said he will necessarily reconsider the initiative about status-neutral travel documents [for Abkhaz and Ossetian people].

Zakareishvili told Interpresnews he has reasonable doubt the documents did not work; mostly citizens of Georgia accepted them and not the people who were targets of the initiative of the acting government of Georgia.

“Critical attitude towards status-neutral travel documents still remains. We must evaluate how the policy of the current authority of Georgia with regard to this issue worked. It will not be correct if I immediately annul it. First, we must study the issue and find out where it worked and where did not. According to my information, this document did not work and it was sort of fabrication. However, acting government claimed Abkhaz and Ossetian people were taking passports though only citizens of Georgia accepted them (who lived in Tbilisi, Zugdidi, Gori and have Georgian passports alongside Abkhazian-Ossetian passports) and not those people who were categorically against taking Georgian passports,” Paata Zakareishvili said and added that this initiative was improperly passed.

“In my opinion it was absolutely vain and useless initiative. In fact it was Georgian passport and not a neutral document. I cannot understand whom we were deceiving. If a person holding this passport had lost it abroad, she/he had to apply to the Georgian consulate. Georgian consulate had to provide them with service when traveling abroad. The symbols attached to the passport also were Georgian. If it worked, we should find out how many people trusted it,” Zakareishvili said.

He added that alternative documents will not replace neutral travel document.

“Alternative version for this document is only Georgian passport. Georgia has its state passport. Abkhaz and Ossetian people always claimed that we hinder them travelling abroad. We will support them to travel abroad with maximum privileges though they must take Georgian passports. With those neutral documents they can visit only those countries, which accepted those document, but they will be able to travel everywhere with Georgian passports,” the candidate of the state minister said.

He said if the neutral documents are cancelled, the privileges, which the document-holders had, will work in future too but only for the Georgian passport-holders.

“However, we must also evaluate how those privileges worked,” Zakareishvili added.

Status-Neutral Travel Document and Neutral ID is humanitarian document which allows residents of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali region to get social services and travel abroad.

Japan, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, USA, Bulgaria, Poland, Israel and Estonia have accepted status-neutral travel document.